In the hospitality/food industry, prepared foods often need to be stored for transportation or later use. Restaurants and other large-scale food service operations often prepare dishes in advance and then refrigerate the food so that it can be reheated and served at a later time. This practice, referred to as “cook and chill,” helps reduce costs associated with cooking and food preparation while also prolonging the storage life of the food.
The cooked food is typically stored and transported in rectangular, stainless steel pans, commonly known as steam pans or hotel pans. These food pans are of a standard size known to the food industry. These pans ordinarily have a flange or horizontal lip extending around the circumference of the open pan top to hold the pan in a steam or buffet table and/or to offer a convenient lifting and carrying point. The standard size hotel pan is approximately 12.8″×20.8″ (L×W), with other standard sizes referred to as half size, quarter size, third size, etc. FIG. 1 shows a standard hotel pan 10 and lid 12. Standard pans are available in various depths, for example 2, 4, or 6 inches deep.
A problem with the “cook and chill” method is that warm food can serve as a breeding ground for bacteria which can cause food poisoning. Because bacterial growth is inhibited at low temperatures, it is important to rapidly chill the cooked food prior to refrigerated storage in order to minimize the risk of human illness. For this reason, for more than 30 years, most health regulations have required that food prepared for later use be cooled from cooking temperature to 40 degrees Fahrenheit or below within certain minimal amounts of time. For example, the 2005 FDA Food Code recommends that hot food be cooled from 140° to 70° F. within two hours, and cooled from 70° to 41° F. within six hours. Potentially hazardous foods must be cooled even faster.
Unfortunately, most commercially available refrigerators are not capable of cooling a standard hotel pan of food quickly enough to comply with these regulations. Although food can be chilled rapidly enough using expensive chilling equipment such as high-capacity blast coolers with high-velocity airflow, such equipment can cost $20,000 or more. As a result, most restaurants and food service operations are forced to use more labor, time, and space intensive methods such as dividing the food into smaller or thinner portions and placing the food into shallow pans, continuously stirring food in a container placed in an ice water bath, using chilled paddles to stir the food, or adding ice as an ingredient.
All of these prior art methods suffer from a number of disadvantages. Blast coolers are expensive and typically require extensive maintenance. Dividing the food into thin layers is labor intensive and wastes valuable refrigerated kitchen space. Stirring and or using chilled paddles is also labor intensive and carries an increased risk of introducing contamination into the food or spreading contamination to different pans. Adding ice as an ingredient dilutes the flavor and consistency of the food. And finally, various studies have shown that most of these methods are simply ineffective in chilling prepared food as rapidly as required by the regulations.
Thus, there is still a need for an improved method of rapidly cooling prepared food from cooking temperatures down to 40° F. or below.